Attitudes and facilitation in the attainment of status 9780912764030

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Acknowledgements
List of Tables
List of Figures
Introduction (page 1)
References (page 37)

Citation preview

a nner Attitudes and

Facilitation in the Attainment of Status by

RUTH M. GASSON

University of Cambridge ARCHIBALD O. HALLER

University of Wisconsin, Madison WILLIAM H. SEWELL

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Published by the Arnold M. and Caroline Rose Monograph Series, American Sociological Association.

THE ARNOLD AND CAROLINE ROSE MONOGRAPH SERIES IN SOCIOLOGY A gift by Arnold and Caroline Rose to the American Sociological Association in 1968 provided for the establishment of the Arnold and Caroline Rose Monograph Series in Sociology. The conveyance provided for the publication of manuscripts in any subject matter field of sociology. The

donors intended the series for rather short monographs, contributions that normally are beyond the scope of publication in regular academic journals.

The Series is under the general direction of an editorial board appointed by the Council of the American Sociological Association and responsible to the Publications Committee of the Association. Competition for publication in the Series has been limited by the Association to Fellow, Active and Student members.

THE ARNOLD AND CAROLINE ROSE MONOGRAPH SERIES IN SOCIOLOGY Under the General Editorship of ALBERT J. REIss, JR., Yale University

and the Editorial Board BERNARD BARBER, Columbia University

G. FRANKLIN EDWarps, Howard University EDWARD L. McDILL, John Hopkins University NORMAN B. RYDER, Princeton University ARTHUR L. STINCHCOMBE, University of California (Berkeley ) HARRISON C. WHITE, Harvard University

Library of Congress Number 70-183-122 International Standard Book Number 0-912-764-03-1

© American Sociological Association 1722 N St. N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036

Acknowledgements

This monograph is one in a series of research reports growing out of a longitudinal study of the status attainment process, directed by William H. Sewell. This research program has been supported by grants from the National Institute of Health, U.S. Public Health Service (M-6275); the Social Rehabilitation Services, Social Security Administration; the University of Wisconsin College of Agricultural and Life Sciences; and the Research Com-

mittee of the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin. We wish to acknowledge the computational services of the University of Wisconsin Com-

puter Center and the generosity of the Kellogg Foundation for providing a fellowship for Ruth M. Gasson’s year at Wisconsin. We thank Donald J. Treiman, Robert M. Hauser, Lylas Brown, and some anonymous readers for their valuable criticisms, suggestions, and help.

Ruth M. Gasson Archibald O. Haller William H. Sewell Madison, Wisconsin August 1972

Table Page List of Tables

. Facilitation Variables |S 8 Attalmmemt 2 i ~=—d'Y 1 Zero-Order Correlations between Pairs of Attitude and

2 Linear and Curvilinear (Dummy Variable) Coefficients of Determination of Selected Independent Variables on Status

3. Regressions to Test Hypothesis of Multiplicative Interaction

between Attitude and Facilitation Variables 0-9

4 Zero-Order Correlations between Variables Used in the Model _.. 26

Figure Page List of Figures

Attitude and Facilitation i

1 Additive Model to Show the Relationship of Behavior to

2 Interaction Model Showing the Relationship of Behavior to

Attitude and Facilitation 00 2) 8

3. Curvilinear Model of the Relationship of Behavior to an

Antecedent Variable 2 2 ee ne = 10

4 Curvilinear Interaction Model of the Relationship of Behavior

to an Attitude and a Facilitator ee

5 Educational Attainment by Significant Others’ Influence... 20

6 Educational Attainment by Mental Ability 000-00. S200

7 Educational Attainment by Educational Aspiration 21 8 Educational Attainment by Socioeconomic Status ... 22

Figure Page List of Figures

9 Occupational Attainment by Socioeconomic Status _-.... 23

10 Occupational Attainment by Occupational Aspiration... 24 11 Occupational Attainment by Educational Attainment _......... 24 12 Educational Attainment by Educational Aspiration, Significant

Others’ Influence Controlled — 7

13 Educational Attainment by Significant Others’ Influence,

Level of Educational Aspiration Controlled 7

Ability Controlled 00 28

14 Educational Attainment by Educational Aspiration, Mental 15 Educational Attainment by Mental Ability, Level of

Educational Aspiration Controlled 8

16 Educational Attainment by Educational Aspiration,

Socioeconomic Status Controlled S80

17 Educational Attainment by Socioeconomic Status, Level

of Educational Aspiration Controlled _ 30

18 Occupational Attainment by Occupational Aspiration,

Socioeconomic Status Controlled ee 82

19 Occupational Attainment by Socioeconomic Status, Level of

Occupational Aspiration Controlled ee «= 82

20 Occupational Attainment by Occupational Aspiration,

Educational Attainment Controlled 8

21 Occupational Attainment by Educational Attainment, Level of

Occupational Aspiration Controlled 0

BLANK PAGE

Introduction

ATTITUDES AND FACILITATION IN THE ATTAINMENT OF STATUS

To say that “behavior is a function of the person and of his environment” is to imply that both personality and. environmental factors contribute to behavior and that they combine in a specific way. This monograph explores the implications of several possible forms of the relationship. Several models, leading to a more general one, are presented and developed to account for the way in which personality and environmental variables might combine to result in a certain type of behavioral outcome, namely the attainment of a position in the educational or occupational prestige hierarchy. Data are provided to illustrate and evaluate each model. Implications for external induce-

ment of behavior are considered. :

A recent paper (Warner and DeFleur, 1969:153-154) distinguished three views currently held of the nature of the relationship between prejudicial

attitudes (an aspect of personality) and acts of discrimination. (a) The postulate of consistency: As summarized by Turner (1968:3), “Given opportunity, the absence of countervailing attitudes and an appropriate situation,

one predicts behavior from attitude on the basis that behavior is a direct reproduction of attitude.” (b) The postulate of independent variation: Merton (1949:102-103) has challenged the postulate of consistency in the 1

area of racial attitudes and stated that there was no reason to assume that attitudes and behavior would be consistently related. “Stated in formal socio-

logical terms, this asserts that attitudes and overt behavior vary independently. Prejudicial attitudes need not coincide with discriminatory behavior.”

(c) The postulate of contingent consistency. “. . . Such interactional concepts as norms, roles, group memberships, reference groups, subcultures, etc., pose contingent conditions which can modify the relationship between attitude

and action.” (Warner & DeFleur 1969:154) Warner and DeFleur (1969:154) come down on the side of the postulate of contingent consistency, citing experimental evidence to show that neither the postulate of consistency nor that of independent variation was tenable. “[t]here was no simple way in which actions towards an object could be accurately predicted from knowledge of the relevant attitudes alone. Clearly, an adequate theory of attitude must take into account the intervening situational variables which modify the relationship between attitudes and action.”

Yinger (1965:45) made a similar point. “In short, a person has many tendencies to behave . . . Which one will be acted upon cannot be predicted by knowledge of the individual alone because each requires a facilitating en-

vironment. Behavior is never in an environmental vacuum. The principle of multiple possibilities applies equally to situations. Their meaning for behavior cannot be defined independently of the individuals who experience them, for the same cue or the same force will affect persons with different tendencies differently.” Investigators of behavior have tended to concentrate on one type of variable

alone, as noted by Vroom (1963:571). “Some emphasize personality, conceived as the relatively enduring psychological properties of an individual, as the locus of the basic causes of behavior while others look to the environmental variables such as group structure, communication, and role. Few have investigated environmental and personality determinants of behavior simultaneously.”

Inkeles (1959:273) stressed the need for the two disciplines, social psychology and sociology, with their different analytic foci, to come together to explain behavior. Full understanding of any social situation and its probable consequences requires a knowledge of the main facts about the social structure and of the personalities operating in that structure. Psychologists tend to emphasize the personality components of behavior and minimize the impact of the social structure while sociologists generally try to account for action in terms of a prior state of society. Durkheim (1951), for example, looked exclusively to social structural factors to account for differential tendencies

toward suicide. Inkeles (1959) called for the integration of both sets of factors into a larger explanatory scheme: ignoring either makes it difficult to

explain why a given state of society leads to a certain type of behavior at some times but not at others, or why the same person under different circumstances acts differently.

While many writers recognize the contribution of both types of variables, there is still the tendency to view one set as fundamental and the other as mediating, a channel through which the impulse for action flows and which 2

may add or subtract a little from the final outcome. Warner and DeFleur (1969), DeFleur and Westie (1963), seem to have regarded attitudes as the prior influence, to be modified by social structural factors. On the other hand, the social psychological theory underlying linear path analysis of attainment

| behavior, while not made explicit, seems to be a version of Newcomb’s early (1950:30-33) position in which organismic and sociological factors are thought to be independent variables whose influence on overt behavior is mediated by intervening social psychological variables such as attitudes. In this tradition, Duncan, Featherman, and Duncan (1972: Chs. 6-7) have employed personality traits such as need achievement and level of aspiration in their recursive model of occupational attainment, to mediate the prior variables, such as the education of one’s parents or one’s own level of intelligence. Featherman’s (1971) analysis of the Blau-Duncan (1967) data has the same overall design, testing the adequacy of certain values as intervening variables. Both reports concluded that these indicators of motivation did not have a powerful role in explaining how achievement is related to background factors, though it is still possible that better indicators might be found. Developing this approach, Sewell, Haller, and Portes (1969) and Sewell, Haller, and Ohlendorf (1970) gave attitude variables a more positive role in their path model for the process of educational and occupational attainment. Aspirations were still regarded, however, as transmitting the influence of the prior variables—family socioeconomic status, significant others’ influence, mental ability and academic performance—on the dependent variables— education and occupational attainment. The present analysis examines hypotheses proceeding from a different posi-

tion. It posits two types of independent variables, attitudes and facilitating factors, which are considered necessary to account for subsequent states of behavior. Neither set is regarded as being more fundamental than the other and either may have the effect of limiting attainment. The educational or occupational prestige hierarchies which emerge through human interaction and represent shared definitions of reality function as sets of possible goals. The dependent variables, the behavioral outcomes in which we are interested, describe the differences in levels of attainment of persons with respect to these

hierarchies. The attitude variable is defined in terms of the dependent variable. Individuals holding a concept (however imperfect) of present realities and future possibilities, organize their activity in an attempt to realize specific

goals. In this sense we speak of behavior as being motivated. This orientational antecedent of behavior, the subject’s attitude toward the objects, here limited ranges of the educational or occupational hierarchies, serves as one category of independent variable, and is measured by level of aspiration. A level of aspiration describes the sector of the hierarchy a person has chosen as his goal: he may actively work toward this end or more passively allow himself to arrive there.

The members of the second class of independent variable, the facilitators, are determined in light of both the attitudinal and behavioral outcome variables. Attitudes or aspirations can only be enacted in a context or environment. Here we extend the concept of facilitators to cover any variables which might reasonably influence the expression of aspirations in attainments. With 3

occupational status attainment as the outcome variable and level of occupational aspiration as the attitude variable, for example, it includes background factors such as age, race, socioeconomic status of origin, community of residence, education and occupational history. It also embraces cognitive factors pertaining to the individual: his mental ability, Mead’s (1934) notion of the self-concept, and also the appropriate expectations of significant others. Collectively these are termed facilitating variables; they also serve as independent variables in the paper. These variables generally are only indirectly under the control of the individual and they vary in the degree to which they influence the expression of an attitude variable in behavior. These definitions underline the interdependence of the two classes of variables for determining the relevant behavior—in this case the attainment of Status. On one hand, the attitude variable (aspiration) can be expressed in the relevant behavior only within the field of facilitation, while, on the other hand, facilitation without at least a moderately high level of aspiration could not result in very high levels of attainment. As used herein, facilitation is not the same as opportunity. Variables describing an opportunity structure would be those standing for the availability of positions at various levels of either the educational hierarchy or the hierarchy of occupational prestige. More generally, an opportunity structure is a concept describing the availability of

, statuses within the structural variable with respect to which outcomes in behavior occur. (We do not use the concept in this analysis.) In the narrower

context the work deals with the implications of the relationship between aspiration and facilitation for status attainment but it is suggested that the model might have wider application. As Warner and DeFleur (1969) suggested, social structural variables might include a multiplicity of interactional concepts such as reference groups, significant others, peer groups, roles, subcultures and voluntary organizations, while the list of facilitating variables in the personality category might be expanded to cover such concepts as beliefs and values, inner-and other-directedness, need for approval, alienation and status anxiety—in fact any variables influencing the expression of aspirations in attainment.

We began the analysis which the present monograph reports with the above theoretical formulation in mind. In general, it is our hope that we can contribute testable theories of behavior which are applicable to the real world in which human beings formulate and attempt to attain goals. We had hoped to improve the theory of status attainment and thus to increase the amount of status attainment variance we are able to explain. Previously, we and others have used linear regression models to provide a plausible casual explanation of levels of educational and occupational attainment and to account for variance in them. We have found that educational attainment is a major determinant of occupational attainment level and that the linear antecedent system is quite successful in accounting for educational attainment level. Specifically we can account for about 40 percent of the variance in occupational attainment and about 57 percent of the variance in educational attainment (Sewell, Haller, and Ohlendorf, 1970:1022). Though this may be quite exceptional in the study of individual social behavior, it is still far from being a complete explanation. 4

To raise the amount of explained variance we might look to new variables, to better measures of present variables, or to new ways to combine variables. We do not hold out much hope for the first and second possibilities (except

that role relationships in early adulthood might help account for levels of occupational attainment, but probably not for educational attainment). At the specific level of research in the attainment of status, the present paper is an attempt to use the general lines of thinking indicated above to suggest new ways to combine variables and thus to learn whether this avenue will improve scientific understanding.

In the ensuing sections of the analysis we have used the theory to suggest ways of combining variables. We have examined the nonlinear combinations suggested by it, but we have also examined nonlinear combinations not suggested by this particular theory. To anticipate the results: we found no compelling evidence to abandon linear models; we have found some justification

(but no strong practical reason) to support, at some levels, a decelerating relationship compatible with but not anticipated by the theory; and we have found little evidence to support the theory (although we now believe that feedback of the level of facilitation on the level of the attitude might well make the latter dependent in part upon the former, thus reducing the nonlinear accelerating effects of the combination of the two). Additive model

What form of function will best explain how attitudinal and facilitating variables determine behavioral outcomes? Multiple linear regression analysis, on which path models are based, assumes an additive combination. Attainment is estimated by summing each variable, weighted by its respective regres-

sion coefficient. Educational attainment, for instance, might be estimated from a constant, plus a quantity of the respondent’s mental ability, plus a quantity of his family’s socioeconomic status, plus so much aspiration, and so on. This is in line with the notion of contingent consistency, attainment being neither independent of nor wholly dependent upon a single variable. Given the level of facilitation, behavior will vary directly with strength of attitude, and vice versa.

A simple additive model for predicting behavior is shown in Figure 1. In this and the following diagrams, only one attitude and one facilitating variable can be shown at a time but in the real world there would be no such limitation.

In the case of individuals with the same level of aspiration, differences in facilitation are translated directly into different levels of attainment, and conversely those starting with the same amounts of facilitation reach differing statuses, depending on the strength of their attitudes. There would appear to be limitations to the additive model. It implies, for example, that variables can readily be substituted for one another. The model would suggest, if mental ability were facilitating educational performance, that an individual with minimal intelligence could compensate for this shortcoming if his aspirations were sufficently high and that he thereby might achieve as well as does another, who has moderate ability but lower aspira5

Figure 1.—Additive model to show the relationship of behavior to attitude and facilitation

Fr

Fy

Fo

Note: A, F, and B indicate attitude, facilitation, and behavior, respectively.

6,

tions. Such an outcome is not impossible but is unlikely. The fundamental drawback is the assumption of constant slopes of the regressions. Differences in attainment between individuals on two planes of facilitation are regarded as remaining constant over all levels of aspiration and vice versa. The additive model does not allow for interaction in the statistical sense between the attitude and facilitator prior to the act but treats each as making an indepen-

_ dent contribution to the predicted behavior. , Empirical evidence does not always support this stand; several investigators have demonstrated the mediating influence exerted by one set of variables

on the other. Thus Warner and DeFleur found that persons with given

verbal attitudes behaved rather differently depending on the social structural conditions. They concluded that an adequate model of behavior must take into account the intervening forces which alter the contingencies in action among persons with given attitudes. Inkeles (1959:263-264) made the point more specific, advocating that the relevant behavior be treated as the outcome of the interaction of the sociological and psychological variables: “Combined effects of personality and structural variables may produce effects far more massive than might be suggested by a simple additive approach to the two ‘independent’ variables.”

Although their recursive model, with the usual additive assumptions, was successful in accounting for more than half the variance in educational attainment and over one-third in occupational attainment of young men, Sewell,

Haller, and Portes (1969) and Sewell, Haller, and Ohlendorf (1970) did not reject the possibility that other models, incorporating somewhat different social psychological assumptions, might be better. They suggested that en-

during attitudes, such as eductaional and occupational aspirations, might function as independent forces, expressing themselves in relevant overt types of behavior to the degree that other personality and situational variables permit. This would imply that the social structural and intrapersonal factors not only produce aspirations but also function as differential facilitators of the expression of aspiration in attainment. Going one step further, they suggested

that the combined effects of aspirational and facilitating variables would produce nonlinear curves of influence on behavior variables and that a nonlinear system of statistical analysis treating interaction effects might prove a more useful tool than the model they presented. (Sewell, Haller, and Portes, 1969:91). Interaction model

A linear model handling multiplicative interaction is given in Figure 2. A, ,A,..--+An representing levels of attitude is predicted from an equation of the form:

B=f, (F) +f, (A) + £, FA)

where (F ° A) is the interaction term.

With this formulation, one variable modifies the relationship between the other and the dependent behavior, this relationship being specific to each category of the first. A low value of one variable depresses the relationship

. while a high value enhances the effect of the other. Attainment rises more rapidly with increasing facilitation among ambitious people than among those with lower aspirations; persons enjoying greater facilitation show greater behavioral response to increases in motivation than those who are held back by limited facilitation. Combining high aspiration with high facilitation gives

much higher levels of attainment than might be predicted from the additive model while low facilitation with low aspiration leads to lower attainment. The additive model suggested that a high level on one variable could com-

pensate for a low value on the other. Here, instead, a low value on one detracts from the effect of the other. With lower aspiration, for example, an individual’s attainment would be restricted even given adequate facilitation,

whereas an individual with higher aspiration would probably exploit the potential for action more fully. Similarly, adequate facilitation may allow the full expression of the aspiration while its absence might curtail it. Inkeles

(1959:273) provided an appropriate illustration: “For lack of appropriate motivation, those who are otherwise eligible may not use the opportunities for mobility to maximum advantage. Among those who are eligible, some will make the effort, others will not. Of those who strive, some will have the capacity, some will not.” 7

Figure 2.—Interaction model showing the relationship of behavior to attitude and facilitation

B

An

A\

Ao

F Note: A, F, and B indicate attitude, facilitation, and behavior, respectively.

Curvilinear model

A limitation of the linear interaction model is the assumption that when one variable is controlled, equal increments of the other will elicit a constant response in the dependent variable. Suppose family income to be a relevant facilitator for educational attainment: the model suggests that unit changes in income, at a given level of aspiration, have the same power to increase the number of years of education completed, irrespective of current income. It is more plausible to argue that the efficacy of income will vary from one level to another; in other words, that the income elasticity of demand for education depends upon the level of income. In the first place, if a family with a very low income has an increase in the funds at its disposal, essential items like food and clothing probably will have high priority. As income rises beyond the bare subsistence level, the higher education of the children may be seen

as a possibility and it will be accepted that funds should be set aside for college. Within a certain range, the level of education planned might be very sensitive to the level of wealth. If the family moves still higher up the scale, 8

however, it is unlikely to reserve the same proportion of income for education, because after a point more money cannot secure anything better.

In the second place, while the educational hierarchy has been visualized as a continuum, it is not infinite. There is a lower limit, representing no formal education, and for all practical purposes an upper limit also. The occupational

prestige scale similarly has upper and lower limits: positions at the top are the most desirable, and there are fewer of them; hence competition is keen. Therefore, to achieve each successive step up the ladder will call for greater effort. Increments of a given factor will have diminishing marginal returns in terms of attainment. In the previous example, this would mean that a given sum to be devoted to increasing educational attainment would have greater impact on a youth who would otherwise be unable to attend college than on the son of a wealthy family who had already graduated from a university

high in prestige. To take another case: suppose the prestige level of the father’s job is used to predict the son’s occupational attainment. Over a considerable range the son’s attainment might be sensitive to increases in facilitation of this nature, until finally, increments in his father’s status have no further effect upon his achievement. This would be because the son is already at such a high level that there are few positions higher and parental influence

alone is not sufficient to secure them. Stated another way, the attainment variable becomes progressively less sensitive to changes in aspiration or facilitation, or the “elasticity of response” decreases at higher levels.

These examples have involved a possible curvilinear relationship between

a facilitator and attainment. It is perhaps harder to visualize a situation in which attitude is the independent variable but, in theory, if an attitude could be incremented by discrete amounts, the same relationship could apply. Figure

3 expresses the curve relationship between an independent variable and

attainment.

If there were no diminution of the number of positions at the top of the hierarchy, this form of relationship, a curve approaching a ceiling, would not apply. In a time of rapid technological change, for instance, when job oppor-

tunities for graduates are expanding faster than the supply, competition among them for the occupations of high status might be no more fierce than it is among those vying for the occupations of lower prestige—and might in-

deed be less severe. In such circumstances, increases in education would facilitate increasing occupational attainment at an accelerating rather than a decelerating rate. Curvilinear interaction

Fitting together the two previous models results in a curvilinear interaction model (Figure 4), the implications of which are:

1) At each level of attitude, the facilitator has a unique relationship with the attainment variable; at each level of facilitation, the attitude variable has a unique relationship with the attainment variable.

2) Each relationship is positive and nonlinear, so that increments in the 9

Figure 3.—Curvilinear model of the relationship of behavior to an antecedent variable

Note: A, F, and B indicate attitude, facilitation, and behavior, respectively.

independent variable add successively less to attainment, finally reaching a ceiling where no further improvement can be made.

3) An increase in facilitation always has more impact on subjects with higher aspirations; raising aspirations is always more effective in improving attainment among those with better facilitation. 4) With increasing facilitation, the difference in behavior between low and high aspirers becomes more marked; as attitude strength increases the behavior of those low and high in facilitation diverges. The curve imposes a ceiling, however, so that the gap does not widen indefinitely.

With the linear interaction model, individuals who score high on both facilitation and aspiration would be expected to perform much better than on the additive assumption. With the curve setting a ceiling on attainment, however, those high on both variables are deflected from the highest attainment and may not in consequence achieve much more than would be assumed

from the additive model. Variance in behavior of a population is therefore somewhat curtailed, compared with that predicted from the linear model. 10

| An

Figure 4.—Curvilinear interaction model of the relationship of behavior to an attitude and a facilitator

B

Ay

Ao

|F

Note: A, F, and B indicate attitude, facilitation, and behavior, respectively.

Clustering—correlation of attitude and facilitation variables The present model would allow some individuals to be high on one variable and low on the other: high aspirers may have low facilitation and vice versa. As indicated elsewhere (Haller and Miller, 1971:30-33), when the subject’s knowledge of his own abilities and interests, and the potentials and limitations of his particular environment changes, he will try to bring his aspirations and facilitation into line. To a limited extent, an individual may try to manipulate his facilitating resources to correspond with his aspirations. For example, he may study in his spare time to attain higher qualifications in order to further

his career. Much more frequently, it will be his aspirations which will be adjusted. If he realizes that his parents cannot support him through a long and expensive training he may cease to aspire to a professional career; or a boy with above-average intelligence or high socioeconomic status may discard his dream of becoming a craftsman or laborer. It is perhaps easier to change one’s attitude or aspiration and indeed it is often the case that the individual is willing to change his aspiration in one sector of behavior because there are 11

many other sectors in which he can or must act and he realizes that it would be pointless to waste effort on impossible goals.

One consequence of this feedback of facilitation and aspiration on one another will be a clustering of individuals such that their attitudes conform in general with those of others with similar facilitation. Groups who score high on facilitation will be expected to show high mean levels of aspiration; those low on facilitation will usually have lower ambitions and thus will attain lower

goals. This does not mean that aspirations are reduced to the more fundamental level of facilitators but rather that there will be few instances where the two are wildly incongruent.

This realistic appraisal and adjustment of attitudes and facilitators is thought to be a sign of maturity. Ginzberg et al. (1951) suggested that the realistic phase of occupational choice occurs in the 17th and 18th years. Higher correlations between aspirations and facilitating factors would therefore be anticipated for youths than for children. High correlations are expected where the subject perceives a given facilitator to be crucial for attainment. Closer agreement is also expected between pairs of variables most relevant to current behavior. Among young children a high correlation may be found between educational aspiration and the educational climate of the home. Among older youths, who are beginning to develop their own views and plans—which are not necessarily the same as their parents’ expectations for them—greater agreement is predicted between levels of educational aspiration and academic ability. Youths about to start work are probably more realistic than school children in relating short-term occupational aspirations to the jobs available, while neither group would be realistic with regard to plans for retirement. Here we suggest a temporal sequence, most clustering

occurring between facilitating and attitudinal variables most relevant to current goals.

In the terms of Yinger’s (1965:244-266) model of the relationship between prejudice, racial discrimination and structural supports, clustering would imply

that persons bounded by the same structural supports would be similar in their individual tendencies; few would fall into the area of poor prediction described by Warner and DeFleur (1969). Yinger’s model allows that, through the mediating influence of the structural supports, an extremely prejudiced person, the all-weather illiberal, would not discriminate against Negroes in a liberal environment where strong support was given to nondiscrimination. Under the clustering assumption, the all-weather illiberal who was continuously exposed to a cultural climate supporting nondiscriminatory

behavior and who was constrained to alter his actions might eventually modify his attitude, also. This need not be a one-way process as the entry of a large number of prejudiced persons into a liberal community might change the prevailing climate of opinion there. It is suggested, then, that attitudes will be continuously modified to bring them somewhat into line with the potential for action afforded by the environment and to a much lesser extent, facilitation will be manipulated to allow a fuller expression of aspirations. Taken to its extreme conclusion, this would

result in a perfect correlation between attitude and facilitation variables. 12

Yinger (1965:38) has noted that “. . . under conditions in which sociocultural structure and individual experience are relatively stable and repetitive, either a purely sociological or a purely psychological approach to personality is effective, because the constructs of each are likely to be adequate indexes of the variables studied by the other.”

In reality, however, people lack perfect knowledge and in any case the circumstances change. Particularly among adolescents in the process of making career decisions, the situation will be far from stable and at least some

individuals will not have reconciled their aspirations with the potential for action available to them. A “half-way house” is expected, where clustering is present but not complete.

Under the interaction assumption, being high on one variable results in greater variance in attainment, but with clustering the range of positions open to those highest in facilitation or aspiration might be almost as restricted as it is to those starting at the bottom. While it may be difficult for the son of an unskilled worker to rise above the prestige level of the highest blue-collar

occupations, for example, it may be as hard for the son of a family of high Status to fall below the level of the lowest white-collar occupations.

Clustering would tend to mask the effect of interaction. If all individuals with a given level of aspiration were equal in facilitation, it would not be necessary to consider facilitation in predicting the relevant behavior. A single regression of the relevant behavior on attitude would give as good an estimate as a series of regressions within each type of facilitation. Net effect of interaction, curvilinearity, and clustering

So far each influence on the attainment process has been treated in isola-

tion. In practice, all might occur simultaneously and only the net effect would be observed. Under varying circumstances one set of factors or another

may become the most salient for behavior. Interaction suggests that those high in both facilitation and attitude will perform better than would be predicted from the sum of the individual effects while the notion of a decelerating

curve is that high attainment will be restricted. Although interaction takes into account the effects of facilitators and attitudes separately, with clustering the relevant behavior would be partially predictable from either, taken alone. Some of the conditions under which one set of influences predominates rather than another may be specified.

Clustering assumes a pair of variables each making a significant contribution to attainment and perceived by the subject as necessary for this attainment. In the case of behavior occurring close to the present, clustering 1s likely to be more pronounced than in that of actions to be taken in the more distant future. Interaction is expected to show most clearly where each of a™ pair of variables has a strong effect on behavior but where clustering is not marked. If the variables are highly correlated, so that each explains virtually the same variance in the relevant behavior, it is unlikely that an interaction term will be able to account for much additional variance. Curvilinearity is expected where there is an effective upper limit on attainment. It would not be predicted where the ceiling is so remote that opportunities for short-run up13

ward mobility are virtually unrestricted. Strong clustering would obscure the curvilinear effect because only segments of each curve would be found. Hypotheses arising from the models

We bypass the simple additive model and proceed directly to the others. 1. Clustering. Individuals in the process of status attainment adjust aspirations to bring them into line with the potential for action provided by their facilitation and try to manipulate facilitation to enable them to fulfill their aspirations. High correlation is therefore predicted between pairs of facilitating and attitude

variables relevant to a given behavior. This correlation is expected to be higher among more mature subjects, between variables perceived as crucial

; for attainment, and between variables most relevant to current decisions. Hypothesis 1. The correlation between a given facilitator and the corre-

2. Curvilinearity. , sponding attitude is positive and significant.

Educational and occupational prestige scales being regarded as continua of increasing difficulty, at lower levels of attitudinal and/or facilitating variables small increments of either will yield large increments in status attainment; at progressively higher levels of either independent variable given increments have a diminishing effect on status attainment.

Hypothesis 2. The slope of the regression of attainment on attitude or facilitation becomes progressively less steep at higher levels. 3. Interaction.

Each independent variable mediates the relationship between its corresponding pair and behavior. Being low on one variable depresses the relationship of the others to attainment; being high enhances it. This effect is expected to be most apparent in pairs of variables having strong predictive power for

attainment and in situations where clustering and curvilinearity are less marked.

Hypothesis 3. Multiplicative interaction of facilitating and attitude variables accounts for a significant proportion of the variance in attainment behavior. 4, Curvilinear interaction. Combining the curvilinear and interaction effects, the final model of attain-

ment against aspiration with facilitation variables intervening is a set of curves which spread out and level off at higher levels of aspiration; graphs of attainment against facilitation with an attitude variable intervening assume the same form.

Hypothesis 4. The regression of attainment on an attitude variable within categories of a relevant facilitator is a set of curves with positive slopes which become less steep and diverge at higher levels of aspiration. The regression of attainment on a facilitating variable within categories of the corresponding attitude variable is a set of curves with positive slopes, becoming less steep and diverging at higher levels of facilitation.

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Data

Tests of the hypotheses have been carried out using data from the Wisconsin study of educational and occupational aspirations and achievement. The data were obtained from an extensive questionnaire survey of all high school seniors in Wisconsin public, private, and parochial schools in 1957 (Little, 1958) and from a follow-up study conducted in 1964 of a one-third

random sample of these students (Sewell and Shah, 1967). The 1957 survey obtained information concerning the students’ educational and occupational aspirations, measured intelligence, family socioeconomic status, and

related topics. In the follow-up, a mail questionnaire was used to obtain information on the educational and occupational attainments of the students as of the summer of 1964. The present study is concerned with the 4,388 male students for whom data are available at both times (87.9 percent of those in the 1957 cohort sample). Various tests have been carried out which indicate that the respondents to the 1964 survey are not a biased sample of the 1957

sample cohort.

Educational and occupational attainments in 1964 are the dependent variables and 1957 levels of educational and occupational aspirations are the attitude variables. Facilitating variables have been selected on theoretical grounds and by reference to the recursive model of attainment behavior constructed by Sewell, Haller, and Portes (1969) from the same data set. Taking only those respondents who were sons of farmers, they used seven variables to predict occupational attainment, namely the socioeconomic status of the family, the respondent’s mental ability, his academic performance in high school, the influence exerted on him by significant others to attend college, his levels of educational and occupational aspiration (all obtained in 1957) and the highest level of education he had reached by the time of the follow-up. The authors found that, after aspiration level, significant others’ influence

was the most powerful predictor of educational attainment, followed by academic performance, level of occupational aspiration, socioeconomic status and measured intelligence. Essentially the same results were found when the path model was applied to males from several other residential backgrounds (Sewell, Haller, and Ohlendorf, 1970). Significant others’ influence, socioeconomic status and measured intelligence have been used here as facilitators for educational attainment.

Significant others’ influence is an index of the respondent’s perceptions of the encouragement he receives from significant others to attend college, a variable which will be most relevant to college plans for those in their senior year at high school. The three types of significant others considered are parents, teachers, and peers. Parents and teachers may be perceived as having expectations for the respondent’s further education. Peers may be somewhat less likely to define a role for the respondent in this way but if they are planning to go to college, they will act as models for the subject. The respondent’s intelligence has a bearing on his educational attainment.

In the matrix of regression coefficients for the path model, academic performance, that is grade point average, was found to have a stronger predictive

power than measured mental ability. Here, however, mental ability is used 15

in the belief that it is less subject to societal influences than academic performance.

Family socioeconomic status was found by Sewell, Haller, and Portes (1969) to have only a weak predictive effect on the educational attainment of farm boys. This is not surprising as the variance in parents’ education and income would typically be low for farm boys and father’s occupation would explain no variance. Elsewhere Sewell and Shah (1967) and Sewell, Haller,

and Ohlendorf (1970) have shown that family socioeconomic status has more influence upon college plans and performance in other residence groups,

and Blau and Duncan (1967) have employed measures of socioeconomic status in path models to predict attainment. An index of socioeconomic status is therefore employed as the third facilitator for educational attainment.! In predicting occupational attainment, education and socioeconomic status are the facilitators used, though others might also have been chosen. Signi-

ficant others’ influence and intelligence have not been used because their greatest relevance is to educational attainment. This gives three models to test the hypothesis for educational attainment and two for occupational attainment, as follows: A. Educational attainment is predicted by 1) Significant others’ influence and level of educational aspiration 2) Mental ability and level of educational aspiration 3) Socioeconomic status and level of educational aspiration B. Occupational attainment is predicted by 1) Socioeconomic status and level of occupational aspiration 2) Educational attainment and level of occupational aspiration. Defining the variables

1. Occupational attainment (OCCATT )—the prestige level of the respond- | ent’s occupation in 1964, scored from 00 to 99 on Duncan’s (1961) socioeconomic index.

2. Level of occupational aspiration (LOA)—the Duncan (1961) socioeconomic index score of the occupation to which the respondent aspired in 1957. The variable was divided into five categories, with scores in the

intervals of 00-19, 20-39, 40-59, 60-79, and 80-99, and treated on a five-point scale.

3. Educational attainment (EDATT)—the highest level of vocational or college education the respondent had obtained in 1964. Five categories were employed to distinguish respondents with no post-high school education, those who had attended vocational school, those who had attended

or were attending college but had no degree, those with a bachelor’s degree, and those with some post-baccalaureate training. *The present theory in no way predicts a correlation among the facilitators; neither does it deny such a correlation. For the most part facilitations are just the “givens” against which the attitudinal variables function. There is thus little point in attempting to construct multivariate indexes of facilitation from these variables.

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4. Level of educational aspiration (LEA)—school plans in 1957. Four categories of this variable comprise respondents who planned no further education, those planning vocational, trade or business school, those planning to go to a state or teachers’ college and and those intending to enter a university or liberal arts college.

5. Significant others’ influence (SOI)—a weighted combination of the respondent’s perceptions of encouragement from teachers, counselors, and parents regarding his college plans, and perception of his friends’ college plans. Scores were divided into four categories with approximately equal frequencies.

6. Mental ability (MA)—percentile rank on the Henmon-Nelson test, which is administered on a state-wide basis in the junior year at high school. This was divided into five categories with scores between O00 and 19, 2039, 40-59, 60-79, and 80-99. 7. Socioeconomic status (SES)—a weighted combination of parents’ education, father’s occupation and mean parental income for the years 1957 to 1960. Dividing the population into approximately equal groups gives categories with scores in the ranges of 00 to 19, 20 to 25, 26 to 32, and 33 and up.

Results

1. Clustering.

‘The hypothesis is that the correlation between pairs of facilitating and attitude variables relevant to a given behavior is positive and significant. As

Table 1 shows, each pair is positively and highly significantly correlated (r’s ranging from 0.37 to 0.62; p < 0.05). Therefore Hypothesis 1 is not rejected.

2. Curvilinearity.

To test the hypothesis of curvilinearity, the regression of the relevant attainment variable against each independent variable treated as a set of dummy variables has been compared with the regression against each regarded as a continuous variable. Strictly speaking, the relationship would be

| said to depart from linearity only where the regression using the dummy variables explains significantly more variance than the simple linear regression. Because dummy variables introduce error variance, this turns out to be a very stringent condition and. only two regressions, of educational attainment on level of educational aspiration (Fig. 7) and of occupational attainment against education (Fig. 11) depart significantly from linearity. (See Table 2.) In both figures the predicted curve may be seen. In the other five cases (Figs. 5-6, 8-10) the relationship is adequately described by a linear function, although several of the non-significant curves (Figs. 9 and 10) tend to follow the same pattern. The relationship of mental ability to educational attain-

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ment (Fig. 6) appears to be of an accelerating form contrary to the hy-

TABLE 1

Zero-Order Correlations between Pairs of Attitude and Facilitation Variables. Zero-Order Correlation of Attitude &

Behavior Facilitator Attitude Facilitator re

EDATT SOI LEA 573 328 EDATT MA LEA 430 185 EDATT SES LEA 402 .162

OCCATT SES LOA .366 134 OCCATT EDATT LOA .622 387 Abbreviations:

EDATT Education Attainment

OCCATT Occupational Attainment

SOI Significant Others’ Influence

MA Mental Ability

SES Socioeconomic Status

LEA Level of Educational Aspiration LOA Level of Occupational Aspiration pothesis. The evidence is suggestive and the hypothesis cannot be rejected outright. (For further evidence, see Figures 12 to 21, in which the curves

are presented for various control categories. Clearly there is some evidence of curvilinearity in some of these lines.) 3. Interaction. To test the hypothesis of multiplicative interaction, regressions have been fitted to the form:

Interaction would be indicated where the coefficient f, of the interaction term

(F * A) was positive and significant. As Table 3 shows, there are three significant interactions but only two of these, between mental ability and level of educational aspiration and between significant others’ influence and level of educational aspiration, are positive. Between socioeconomic status and level of occupational aspiration the interaction is contrary to the hypothesis, being negative, and the negative coefficient of the interaction between educational attainment and level of occupational aspiration only just fails to reach significance. The fifth example, linking socioeconomic status and level of educational aspiration with educational attainment, fails to support the hypothesis. Again, the hypothesis is neither strongly supported nor completely 18

TABLE 2

Linear and Curvilinear (Dummy Variable) Coefficients of Determination of Selected Independent Variables on Status Attainment

Independent Status Attainment Coefficients of

Variables Variables Determination F Pp Linear Curvilinear

(7?) (RR?)

Significant Others’ Educational

Influence (SOI) Attainment (EDATT) 284 .279 * ns Mental Ability (MA) Educational

Attainment (EDATT) 236 = .228 * ns

Level of Educational Educational

Aspiration (LEA) Attainment (EDATT) AT1. 487 68.807